The company’s “97” pension proposal paid 50 dollars per service year for your part time years and 100 dollars for every full time year..stopped at 35 years service. The vested time that you had under the Central States plan counted on day one at your retirement, it was not formulated at age 65. There was no mention of a withdraw penalty similar to the 8 billion in 2007, if the company did succeed in getting the pension back in “97” it would of further damaged the rest of the participants or companies by not contributing, there was no language protection in case of a default. If UPS was so concerned about it’s Union employees losing their benefits why did they not want to cover the pre-2008 retirees, the intent has always been to save costs without any consideration in whether it was the right thing to do.
The padding mentioned is related to the contributions going into a separate plan, your UPS Retirement Plan, it had nothing to do with the Union’s pension. An good example of how things would of went under UPS control just study the meager benefit levels for the part time retirees since “97”.
Considering the opposition that the Union leadership to creating a separate pension plan, what kind of power would the union trustees really have to protect benefit reductions no matter how many are on the pension board, they would still be tokens.
The timing of the sale of the UPS freight branch, the elimination of further funding and vesting into the UPS Retirement Plan, Hoffa’s retirement and the bailout of the Central corresponding around the 2023 contract is very interesting. We shall see down the road.